Tag: Dan Lauzon

Bellator is where the bad UFC castoffs go and, from what we’ve seen so far, World Series of Fighting is where the good UFC castoffs go—the ones who shouldn’t have been fired because they were legitimately talented or were in the UFC’s own top-10 rankings when they were let go.

But at WSOF 6, the tried and true formula of putting ex-UFC fighters with name value against fighters without Wikipedia pages failed. Nearly all the fighters that you’re reading this recap for lost.

Miguel Torres lost too, sadly. The unheralded Pablo Alfonso dispatched the former WEC champ in the first round. He rocked Torres with punches which ultimately set up a guillotine choke finish at 3:05. Torres was once 37-1. Now he’s 40-7 and just lost decisively to a no-name (who’s record was 7-5 heading into the fight) on the prelims of a minor league show. Can it get much worse? Torres doesn’t have a comeback in him. And at age 32, the problem is both the years and the mileage. If Torres doesn’t retire, he might be in for a rough, Jens Pulver-like future.

Remember Joe Lauzon‘s younger brother Dan who was in the UFC back in 2006 at the young age of 18, losing to Spencer Fisher? Remember when he returned in 2010 and lost to both Cole Miller and Efrain Escudero. After the two failed stints in the UFC, Lauzon won five fights in a row on the regional scene. His luck didn’t continue at WSOF 6. The man with the hardest to pronounce last name in MMA, Justin Gaethje, cut Lauzon’s legs out from under him throughout the first round. In the second round, Lauzon was slow and immobile enough for Gaethje to capitalize on it with a right hook and an uppercut which put Lauzon’s lights out.

Find out what happened to Jon Fitch and Josh Burkman, as well as the complete results of the card after the jump.

Why, you ask? Well, simply because the tournament is stacked with top international lightweights including a number of UFC veterans. Dan Lauzon will be in the tournament, as will the winner of an excellent WSOF 4 match up between Tyson Griffin and Gesias Calvacante.

Of course, all this doesn’t sit so well with Keon Caldwell’s camp, who tell MMA Junkie that they are worried of unfair treatment from the WSOF. While Newell has been publicly guaranteed a spot in the lightweight tournament if he’s victorious this weekend, Caldwell has been given no such offer. (“I just think they’re on the Nick Newell hype train,” said Caldwell’s trainer Richard Cox.)

Also fighting this Saturday will be kickboxing star Tyrone Spong, who will be headlining WSOF 4 against California-bred knockout artist Angel DeAnda. It will be Spong’s second World Series of Fighting appearance following his beat-down of Travis Bartlett in November. You can check out a lil’ video of Spong hitting people and acting cocky after the jump. Above, you can enjoy a mini documentary show on Newell’s life that takes you inside his camp, family, and home.

What’s so significant about that date? It was the last time that Jon Fitch lost via submission. The last time, until his World Series of Fighting debut in the main event of WSOF 3 on Friday night, where Fitch was swiftly put to sleep via guillotine choke by Josh Burkman. Yup, that Josh Burkman. The Josh Burkman who was little more than average during his UFC stint, going 5-5 with one of those losses from being choked out by who? You guessed it, Jon Fitch.

Even though the World Series of Fighting announcer called the Fitch vs. Burkman rematch “years in the making,” nobody who has watched MMA believed that nonsense. It was supposed to be Jon Fitch snuffing out Burkman and then grabbing the microphone and telling the UFC to kiss his grits. You know, with Jacob Volkmann lurking over his shoulder mumbling some nonsense about a fighter’s union. But, as they always say, there’s a reason why they actually fight.

Burkman, meanwhile, continued his surprising run of upending former UFC fighters in the WSOF, as he is now 3-0 in all three World Series of Fighting events with victories over Gerald Harris, Aaron Simpson and now Jon Fitch. But who the hell expected him to beat Jon Fitch? I’ll tell you, nobody…except Josh Burkman. And of that nobody percent, who thought that Burkman would choke Fitch to sleep in 41 seconds? Nobody…not even Josh Burkman.

“Who thinks they are going to choke out Jon Fitch?,” Burkman said through a wide smile after the shocking main event that capped off a fairly ho-hum third outing for WSOF.

Prior to the jaw dropping main event, WSOF trudged along with a string of relatively boring fights that yielded very little excitement for those in attendance at The Joint inside of the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. After the first few matches, most fans drowned themselves in spirits and had loud (mostly drunk) conversations that could be heard throughout the venue. The first five fights of the night are barely worth mentioning. Dan Lauzon beat up on a John Gunderson who looked lifeless in the cage. Carson Beebe earned a controversial unanimous decision despite being completely outclassed on the ground by Joe Murphy. The other disgruntled former UFC employee, Jacob Volkmann, put such a snoozer of a performance in a unanimous decision victory over Lyle Beerbohm that Ben Askren tweeted “That fight had less strikes than one of my fights!” So, you know, when Ben Askren pretty much calls your fight boring, you are in trouble.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Dan Lauzon; his last run in the UFC saw him get Toby-Imada’d by Cole Miller and outpointed in a snoozefest by TUF 8 winner Efrain Escudero. All of this came amidst a falling out with his older brother, UFC lightweight contender Joe Lauzon, who spoke out about Dan’s lack of motivation and desire to train. Well, it seems that Dan has finally begun to heed the advice of his big bro, because he’s rattled off four consecutive wins, all by stoppage, since being released by Zuffa over a year ago. Or, it could just be that he’s fighting people way, way below his level, as is the case in the above video.

When Dan Lauzon steps into the Octagon at UFC 114 on May 29th — where he’s scheduled to face TUF 8 winner Efrain Escudero — he will do so without three longtime coaches in his corner. Due to a dispute over Dan’s commitment to training, his brother Joe as well as his trainers Joe Pomfret and Steve Maze will not be traveling to the fight in Las Vegas from their home base in Bridgewater. As the story goes, Dan was given an ultimatum a month ago to shape up and start training 10-11 times per week; when he didn’t, his team broke ties with him. Dan first went public with the story earlier this week, telling the Boston Herald:

"I don’t really know what I did to deserve this. I wouldn’t do that to anybody. I wouldn’t do that to my brother, I wouldn’t do that to anyone in my gym. It’s not right…In my eyes, I was doing everything right. I was making it to the gym; I was training hard two times a day. I was doing everything right. I was completely blown away…

Joe Pomfret is somebody I look at like a father, and he is going to do this to me? You’re going to tell me you can’t (work my corner) and you’re sending me out to Vegas alone for one of my biggest fights? I was completely hurt by it, especially my brother Joe. I don’t think anybody would ever do that to their brother. I can’t think of anyone else that would ever do that to their brother and just tell them, ‘Hey, you’re on your own.’”

Losing is always miserable, but in a combat sport like MMA, getting beaten is no figure of speech. If you lose, you hurt; physically and badly. The risk and danger involved in MMA competition helps make it more exciting than other sports, but behind every highlight-reel knockout and submission is ugly and unfortunate pain — at least for the guy laid out.

Over four years as a pro and nearly twenty fights Cole Miller (15-4) had never been the guy on his back, unconscious after a fight. But there he was being revived and staring up at the lights last September after being dropped by Efrain Escudero.

The hardest part for Miller was not losing in and of itself, or the headache he had to deal with for a bit afterwards. He says it came down to having so much seemingly productive work and sacrifice be rebuffed so abruptly.

“Knowing that I trained that hard, sacrificed a lot in my personal life for the 10-12 weeks in camp all for three and a half minutes and it didn’t go my way. That was disheartening to say the least. Being able to let it go. Accepting that that kind of thing happens and happened for the first time and that it could happen again. Knowing that I’m just a man, you know? These were the hardest parts of dealing with that loss,” Miller says.

(In retrospect, Dan should have never accepted that "Hertz Donut." Photo courtesy of AllElbows.)

The feeding frenzy continues, as the WEC and UFC have reportedly picked up a few more solid additions in the wake of Affliction’s demise. Here’s the latest…

— According to Sherdog, the featherweight bout between Javier Vazquez and L.C. Davis that was supposed to take place during the undercard of "Trilogy" will now take place at WEC 42: Torres vs. Bowles (August 9th, Las Vegas). Vazquez (13-2) is a former King of the Cage and Gladiator Challenge champion who most recently choked out Mark Kergosian in 19 seconds at last month’s Ultimate Chaos show; it was just his third fight since 2003. Davis (also 13-2) is an IFL vet whose most recent decision loss to Michihiro Omigawa at Sengoku 7 in March dropped him from our featherweight top ten list.

– His nickname is “King,” which is kind of weird. – He’s never faced anyone of note in any major organization. – He was suspended for three months and fined $500 after testing positive for marijuana following his victory over Raymond Ayala at Total Fighting Alliance 10 last March.

There, now you’re up to speed. The question now for Affliction is whether this bout will stay on the pay-per-view portion of the card, or whether it will be pushed down in favor of the Jay Hieron and Jason High bout. The latter sounds like the better idea, since guys who take fights on a couple days notice aren’t often known for putting on pay-per-view worthy performances.

More Affliction-related videos, like Fedor and Andrei vlogs, are after the jump.

(If you won’t pay to watch Fedor beat up this man, what will you pay for?)

The quest to figure out how much money Affliction made off their first event continues, and in the latest installment Dave Meltzer revises some of his earlier figures. You may recall that Meltzer first reported that “independent estimates” had pegged the number at 50,000-85,000 pay-per-view buys — far from the “well over 100,000″ that VP Tom Atencio was claiming. In a recent issue of his Wrestling Observer newsletter (via MMA Payout) he says the organization may have done six figures after all:

It’s been hard to narrow down a buy rate for the Affliction show. Promoter Tom Atencio has claimed the figure was more than 100,000. Updated cable sources we’ve checked with have estimated from a low of 65,000 to a high of 100,000. Either way, the number is both excellent by the standards of a promotion with no television (it beats anything TNA has done with 2 million weekly TV viewers), but as noted over and over, it’s a substantial money loser.

A high of 100,000 isn’t so bad for a first pay-per-view event, really. If the reports keep changing at this rate maybe they’ll crack 200,000 some time around Christmas. Though by then we’ll all be speculating about the success of their second show, and Tom Atencio will be claiming they did well over 500,000 buys. Thus the circle of life goes on.

Slightly related: There’s some speculation that recently-signed Affliction fighter Chris Horodecki may face Dan Lauzon (Joe Lauzon’s brother) at “Day of Reckoning” in October. Like Horodecki, Lauzon is also just twenty years old and yet looks like he’s fourteen. Maybe after they fight they can both go hang around out in front of a liquor store together and try to convince someone to buy them beer.